Governors warn of fiscal cliff 'havoc'

12/4/12 12:20 PM EST

AP

Failure to reach a fiscal cliff deal would mean “havoc” in the states, a group of six governors said after Tuesday’s White House meeting with President Obama.

Members of the bipartisan group said they pressed Obama to reach a larger deal Congress, a message the governors said they will take to Capitol Hill meetings with Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid later in the day.

“You got to come together and get this done,” Utah’s GOP Gov. Gary Herbert said. “This impacts the economy, the uncertainty out there is creating havoc with the economy in our states.”

Delaware’s Jack Markell, the National Governors Association chairman, said it is imperative that any deal come without another looming fiscal cliff in the near future. Obama, Markell said, did not “try to handicap” whether he believed a fiscal cliff deal would be reached before year’s end.

“The sooner that this gets resolved, and we believe the sooner this gets resolved in a way that’s not a three-month fix, but that’s a fix for some longer period of time, the better off that we’ll be,” said Markell, a Democrat.

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, who became a GOP hero during his 2011 battle to rescind the bargaining rights of his state’s public employees. Walker sought a conciliatory tone, saying that his focus was on insuring influence for other governors ahead of endorsing elements of any proposal.

“We’re not elected to fix all the problems in Washington,” Walker said. “The president and the members of Congress are here to do that. We’re here to offer a resource in a way that can help not just our state governments but the people we represent in each of our states.”

Walker also said that for now he is not worried about the dwindling number of days before the fiscal cliff hits.

“A lot of times in our states, these decisions get made at crunch time,” he said. “Hopefully the same will happen here.”